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Tuesday, July 28

Tuesday Teaser: Blue Hairs Returning To School

"Grandma Sallie" (Denham) Cupparound the time she enrolled in college.

Going back to school is hard enough if you've only been out a few years, but what if you left at 14 and are now in your sixties?

Angela of Incense & Peppermint shares how it was for her mother in ...in which I humiliate my mother. (Be sure to have tissues handy toward the end.)

Angela's post reminded me of my own great-grandmother, Sarah (Denham) CUPP, who in letters to my mother as a young girl never missed an opportunity to champion education for women.

Born in Iowa in 1849 and then transplanted to rural Kansas at the age of 7, "Sallie" did what girls were expected to do in the 1870s: marry, have children, and keep house. Therefore, she repeatedly cautioned my mother not to fall into the same trap. First get an education! More often than not, her gifts to Mother at Christmas and birthdays were books.

Sadly, the only "degree" my mother ever wanted was an MRS from my father. Worse, she had absolutely no curiosity whatsoever about the world. None.

To placate Grandma Sallie, who had bought her a typewriter to practice on, Mother attended (and graduated from) the local secretarial school, but never used the training. Obviously she could read, but simply had no desire to do so for pleasure. The only book I ever saw her open was the Bible or a hymnal, and only in church.

Grandma Sallie, on the other hand, had a insatiable thirst for knowledge despite - or because of - the lack of schooling in her youth.

At 83, she decided "I don't know enough", and enrolled in a nearby community college. At 83! Her advanced age apparently didn't deter a door-to-door salesman from selling her a set of encyclopedia on "time" at 10 cents a week, which she paid off long before her death ten tears later.

What a wonderful woman she was! My mother went back to university last September, at the age of 60, to do a post-grad diploma in music. That's not been easy, although she's loved doing it. And my mother already has a degree and post-graduate degree, albeit from nearly 40 years ago!

What about the intervening generation, your mother's parent and Sally's children? Did they persue education?

I tell my students the day I quit learning is the day I'll quit work... I love to learn I love to teach. Life has so many lessons to share! Great Post in honor of a Gracious, Educated lady. Love and Light, Nina P.

None of us know enough, but she was so smart, she realized it, admitted it and then did something about it. Great first story to absorb today. Thank you. David McMahon linked to you so I stopped for a visit.~Mary